Consider to buy... First some questions.

[Trojan.Exploit.SSX]

Hi guys...

I played Star Traders RPG Elite for some time and now consider to buy Frontiers. But first I have some questions, 'cause not everything in RPG Elite was fine for me. Maybe somebody have some time to answer:

1. In short the biggest differences between this games?
2. In Star Trader RPG u mostly go from Point A to B to push a Button and then go to another Point. It doesn't matter if u have to deliver something, to go on patrol, to harvest a planet,... much of the interactions feels same. Does it change with frontiers?
3. How is difficulty handled? When I'm right in ST-RPG the difficult was scaling with the time ingame. The longer u play, the harder is everything u do (fighting, exploring, harvesting,...). So u never get the feeling to get better with bigger ships. How is this handled in frontiers?
4. I read, that in Frontiers the story develop also with time passes by ingame. That's right? How does this system work?
5. How many ships are currently ingame and how much will there be when game is released?

Thanks for your patience. Hope to get some answers. :-)

[bookworm2156]

Hi, I hope I can help to answer some of your questions:

1: I find the biggest difference between STRPG and STF to be the way crew is handled. I find it makes the game much more interesting as a sandbox, for me at least to see a glimpse into the running of the ship in this way.

2: there's a lot more flavour to missions this time. There is a chance based card game for patrol-spy-blockade-explore which promotes specialisation through skills and talents, despite the mechanics being similar.

You can often get choices of how to approach missions such as delivery missions, for example being intimidating to get a higher payout at the cost of more rep loss

3: difficulty is scaled with time in game like STRPG, although with bigger ships having more crew and compartment slots it definitely feels like more than a game of stats.

I find bigger ships definitely feel more powerful, and the much better upgrade potential over STRPG helps too

4: all story missions have internal timers that will progress the story if you ignore them. For example, the first story mission is to transport a character to a different planet. If you decide to leave it for a year or so before picking her up, you'll find she has got a ride from another star trader.

5: at the moment I believe there is something on the order of about 12-15 ship gulls available, all with customisable component slots

I don't know the total planned number of Hull patterns

[Trese Brothers]

Thanks to @bookworm for great answers!

Star Trader RPG went from something like 1 ship to over 500 hundred during its life time :D

Also, check out the lore book!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hxev05ooli1rp37/Star%20Traders%20Frontiers%20Lore%20Book%20-%20Volume%201.pdf?dl=0

[Trojan.Exploit.SSX]

Thx for the answers...
Some more questions :-)

1. Is there any endgame content planned? Is there a point in game, where u can't progress because the difficult is too high? Or does the scaling stop after a certain point? That was something I don't understand in STRPG.
2. About the story: So I'm right, that I don't have to care about the story, if i didn't want? Or I get some disadvances, when not doing story missions?
3. Can I recruit Templars (Templar Battleforce), because I love this game....

[Trese Brothers]

1. There is lots more content planned for the game, including some late-game scenarios. I don't say end-game because the game is a sandbox and you can play forever.
2. It gets harder over time, yes. There is a level cap at 32, and since all combat and enemies are symmetrical, the enemies also cap out at this time. During the v2.3.x family of development, we will be raising that cap.
3. Not at this time. Glad you enjoy TBF :D